RE:Growth Riverside
A CELEBRATION OF ART, RIVERSIDE PARK AND THE NEW YORK SPIRIT

A Public Art Exhibition
Produced by the Riverside Park Conservancy in NYC
Curated by Karin Bravin
June 6-September 13, 2021

Four Currents

FOUR CURRENTS is a freestanding painted aluminum sculpture commissioned by The Riverside Arts Conservancy for an exhibition curated by Karin Bravin of Bravin Lee Programs. The coloration, flowing lines and patterning of the sculpture causes it to blend harmoniously with it's environment in the open air, alongside the Hudson River. The title, FOUR CURRENTS, references the unusual 2D aspect of my sculptural work in that the term is also known as vector current, used in the context of four-dimensional spacetime, rather than separating time from three-dimensional space.

There Are Holes in My Perception of the Forest was commissioned by Summit Public Art, in New Jersey. Originally the sculpture was designed for a passageway in the town, so It was designed to be almost like a screen in which the negative spaces symbolize the incomplete nature of memory and it’s coloration and patterning give an impression of dappled light across a forest’s foliage and branches.

featured project
"Meta Morphologies"
paper mobile installation

ART on PAPER, 2019
presented by NL=US

Fair Dates/Hours/Location
March 7 - 10, 2019 | 299 South Street
Pier 36, Downtown Manhattan

Art on Paper's Projects challenge, expand, and engage visitors with their interactive presentation and immersive constructions. This invitational program works with participating galleries and cultural organizations to activate Art on Paper's public spaces. My work is presented by NL=US.

About the work…

“Meta Morphologies” refers to my drawing practice, which starts with brief observations and continues with redrawing from memory, reimagining and reiterating to result in an economy of means of describing something. I think of these shape drawings as abstractions of abstractions or iconic shapes and forms that might reference more than one thing and nothing specifically at the same time. The drawings as part of an installation do not result in a complete Gestalt. I am fighting that tendency in myself as an artist, and a human being, in needing to form compositions that can be understood simply and easily in one glance. One must walk through the space while looking, which automatically slows the viewing experience. So there is back-and-forth between simplicity and complexity and a deconstruction of the way a work is perceived in time and in space. The drawings are cut out of paper, embodying a strong material presence, inviting the visitor to the installation to, literally, enter into a dialogue between physical and illusionistic space.

Patterns of Thought is a new series of three-dimensional wall sculptures commissioned by Arts Brookfield for Brookfield Place. Each of the five colorful sculptures in the exhibition are a poetic representation of a different function or varying state of the human mind, translated through the language of pattern. The sculptures take the abstract components of language and thought and translate them into a physical, tangible form, that speaks to the complexity of the mind in handling various aspects of contemporary life.

Through it’s repetitions and rhythms of interwoven parts, the sculptural installation, “I Notice the Earth Echoes” celebrates the reverberations and cycles of change in nature across our planet. Thinking about change as a primary condition of life I wish the viewer to perceive a different composition from every angle, like an ever-changing landscape painting. Variations on natural themes within the piece are orchestrated to echo one another, implying a strong connection between sight and sound.

When I was asked to create a permanent installation for this contemporary stairway in Finland, I knew immediately that I wanted to create something that would be literally be uplifting to the inhabitants of the house as they make their journeys up and down the stairs. So it was important to establish a feeling of energy and flow in the composition. The title for this piece, “Wend”, is a portion of my first name. To “Wend” is to go in a specified direction, typically slowly or by an indirect route… This title seemed to describe my way of being and my working process as well as I rely heavily on the alternate path through the subconscious mind in my decision-making process.

Commission for private home in Tampere, Finland.
Powder-Coated Aluminum
12 feet
2019

Curated by Cheryl McGinnis

2019

In “Drawing the Invisible”, I have culled lines and patterns of growth from a range of sources to create a complex drawing in three-dimensional space. Tracing the points of the New York City subways, warps and ripples seen in diagrams of space-time and the branching pattern of nerves in the human eye, among other things, I am giving material form to these fragments of information and bits of visual language. They form a unique, interwoven and flowing cacaphony of line, color and light that mirrors both seen and imagined vital energies that converge at the bustling location of the Flatiron.

Storefront Window Installation
for "Activate Market Street"
Newark, New Jersey
January–May, 2016
Cut paper, and painted branches
Approximately 12 feet in diameter

The color and branching connective structure of this 2016 installation were borrowed from the visual vernacular of scientific illustrations and models of the human brain and circulatory system. It may be experienced as a series of drawings in physical space that form an impression of the rhythm and complexity of visual experience and noise spiraling, circulating and accumulating around and within us in perpetual states of change. It is a metaphor for a growing collective consciousness... a by-product of the information age. 

Inspired by weather patterns, flow charts, celestial structures, and the New York City Transit map, "Crosstown" is a 14 foot installation consisting of painted aluminum and wood shapes combined with acrylic paintings on canvas.

“Time Flies” is a paper mobile and installation consisting of two-dimensional symbols, patterns, lines and forms that signify a panoply of geometric and organic structures. Individually the shapes are designed to imply an illusion of curvature and depth, but can confound the eye, as they are also actually distorted and curved in space. They cast bold shadows upon each other, and upon the wall, using light to blur the border between actual space and implied space further. My goal here is to make tangible and visible the effects of the push and pull in the fabric of our universe. The shapes, relative to eachother offer the viewer a physical sensation of the relational dynamics of spacetime as one moves around the piece. 

In the installation “Flowtopia” I was concerned with the idea of alchemy... the desire to transform metal into a universal elixir. My impressions of naturally occurring patterns and flows of energy observed in daily life and through my art practice come together in this work to create a mellifluous suspended drawing. In it I reference and contrast a diversity of biologic and manufactured form evocative of things as disparate as bee hives, electric circuits, sound wave patterns and the branching patterns of veins in the human body. Unifying all of this through color and line I have created a flowing composition to elicit a state of harmony and well-being in the viewer.

Site Specific Lobby Installation for the Exhibit "Approaching Vibrancy" curated by Mary Birmingham and Sarah Walko of the Visual arts Center of New Jersey. Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation and Morris Arts, Morristown, NJ.